Watchmen: Rorschachs Journal
by Zach Archer
Summary: After the Keene act left costumed vigilantes to the dogs, Rorschach tries to continue, and reflects on the corruption of the world.


Rorschach Journal Entry, November 19, 1977

Went for a walk this morning. Was sick of being cramped inside of house, sick of not doing anything. Keene act has screwed us all over. Went to talk to Nite Owl a couple nights ago. He now lives his life as a regular person. When he saw my mask, he nearly had a fit.

I felt it my duty to stay in the house a couple days, maybe watch the television while I still had power in my apartment, while the corrupt still had power. That glowing blue Dr. Manhattan was just shaking hands with Nixon last night. It's all right to keep him lying around, more powerful than a nuclear stockpile, but the occasional person who cleans up the grime that the police step over? No, leave the grime there, until no one can clean it up.

I don't care. As long as there are criminals, evil, I will stand and fight them.

November 20, 1977

Went for another walk. The most corrupt walk of my life.

I stopped by the news stand for my papers. I then went down the "Walk of Shame", a strip of road that has more strippers and prostitutes working and living on it than the whole of Las Vegas. One stopped me, tried to seduce me, went for my genitals. I slapped her away. Her pimp was not very happy. I wasn't very happy with his style, his clothes mainly made from animal skins, like some kind of sex obsessed Native American.

He took me into an alley to see how I liked to get slapped. He tried to smack me with his cane, but I easily pulled it from his grasp and beat him with it. I left the scene before anyone would notice.

On the way, I witnessed a car crash, along with the longest parade of obscenities I had heard for many years. I also watched as the alley way across the street became a war zone, and men beat on each other.

I didn't feel it my duty to stop it. I was too good for these people. I felt that my attention should straggle elsewhere.

Where was elsewhere?

November 21, 1977

Gave up walking, decided it would be better to put on my face, and go find someone much more deserving of punishment than the idiots littering the streets.

I found one, a hooded man who called himself "Death Throes". I laughed when he told me his name, and he pulled a gun on me. I was a faster draw, and his last look at this life was of that of my grapple gun protruding through his stomach.

Police decided to arrive here, instead of worrying about more important things like the hobos fighting in the alleys. I was a much higher, more powerful person compared to them, I was a step higher on the ladder of law. They cleaned up the muck, I took out the whole bags of muck.

The police never saw me. I escaped before they could.

November 22, 1977

I awoke to the sound of crying. The lady who owned the apartment screamed at her kids and told them to shut up. I decided that sleeping was not the best option, and instead put on my coat and went outside.

I don't know why I bother. I walked away from the news stand, paper under my armpit, when the man was robbed, all the money I handed to him now in the hands of a shaking hobo, probably higher than an airplane.

Across the street, I watched the police in the diner, talking and laughing, oblivious to the world, to the place they should be protecting like guardian angels. They had no care in the world, could not care. Why would they? They could either risk their lives to protect their brethren, or they could sit and extend their lives further.

They needed the vigilantes back. They needed a group like the Minutemen to come back and save them from the pit they continued to dig. They would stare up from the pit at the men in the costumes, and ask for help. We would whisper "no" and walk away, wait for them to doom themselves instead of spend their times working together to escape the hole, make sacrifices. Maybe it was human nature not to want to sacrifice for a fellow man, or maybe it was just general idiocy.

Maybe it was human nature not to worry about everything wrong with the world, try to avoid and laugh about it. Or maybe it was just how oblivious people are.

There are good men, and then there are bad men. There are no great men, because they are all dead, they all risked their lives to protect their ideals, or their fellow man, or both.


End file.
